5 Things You Didn’t Know: Sarah Palin

4- Sarah Palin eloped with her high school sweetheart

Soon after Sarah Heath met Todd Palin at a high school basketball game, the two became sweethearts, but another six years would pass before they decided to tie the knot in 1988. Had it been a better fishing year for the two of them (they operated a small commercial fishery), they might have had enough money to pay for a “real” wedding; instead, they eloped, enlisting some witnesses from a nearby nursing home and dropping $35 at a local courthouse.

Known in Alaska as the “first dude,” the blue-collar Todd Palin is a four-time Iron Dog 2,000-mile snowmobile race champion and, according to a piece in the Anchorage Daily News, he is very much a house-husband.

5- Sarah Palin inhaled

Alaskans are permitted by law to possess a single ounce of marijuana, thanks first to a 2003 ruling by the Alaska Court of Appeals that made it legal to possess no more than four ounces, and later, by a Supreme Court ruling that amended the amount to one. The reason it even reached the Supreme Court was because, in 2006, then-governor Murkowski rejected the Court of Appeals ruling.

Consequently, during the 2006 race for governor, marijuana became an issue among the candidates, albeit a minor issue. At this time, Sarah Palin seemingly decided to launch a preemptive strike against any of her old stoner friends who might have been planning to climb out of the woodwork; she announced that not only had she tried weed, but that she couldn’t “claim a Bill Clinton” and say she never inhaled.

Don’t load that celebratory bowl just yet. One last thing you didn’t know about Sarah Palin is that although she did inhale, she opposes legalization.